No Substitute for Victory

If anyone does a year-end wrap-up of the worst ideas of 2012, losing the presidential election deserves to be high on the list.

A note of gloomy wishfulness has entered Republican thinking of late. Maybe a loss in November (if Mitt Romney wins the nomination) won’t be so bad, because a cleansing fire will rid the party of moderates once and for all. Or, from the opposite point of view (if Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich were somehow to get nominated), a devastating defeat will teach the party’s purists a lesson. In any event, a Republican Congress could foil President Barack Obama’s noxious initiatives in a second term.